Caligula’s horse

This tale of the mad Caligula’s affection for his horse Incitatus has a long pedigree. The Roman historian Suetonius, who according to his Britannica biography “used ‘characteristic anecdote’ without exhaustive inquiry into its authenticity,” reported just a generation or two after Caligula’s death that “besides a stall of marble, a manger of ivory, purple blankets and a collar of precious stones, he even gave this horse a house. . . . It is also said that he intended to make him Consul.” By the time of the even less cautious historian Dio Cassius, the rumour had become “fact”: “He even promised to appoint [his horse] consul, a promise that he would certainly have carried out if he had lived longer.”

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August 31 12 ce Antium, Latium January 24, 41 Rome Roman emperor from 37 to 41 ce, in succession to Tiberius, who effected the transfer of the last legion that had been under a senatorial proconsul (in Africa) to an imperial legate, thus completing the emperor’s monopoly of army command....